Benefits of dashboards for your financial spreadsheets

Simon Selkrig, Strategize Financial Modelling, simon@strategizefm.com, Montreal, QC

Here are ten benefits of dashboards with your financial spreadsheets.

1. A summarised output of your financial numbers, which helps you to quickly ascertain your business’ profitability (income statement), financial strength (balance sheet), and its ability to generate cash (cash flow statement), when presented in a tabular format.

   

2. A graphical snapshot of your company’s financial performance across periods, different revenue streams or the revenue and cost drivers.
3. An executive summary of your company’s overall position, which you can present to the overall company in a PowerPoint presentation, rather than lines upon lines of financial numbers.
4. A strategic planning tool, in terms of plotting and comparing your company’s forecasted growth rates under different forecast scenarios.

   

5. A more effective communication tool of your business’ financial performance; especially when presenting it to less financially versed employees or managers in your company, particularly when presented in a graphical form.
6. A sense-check, like your error and alert checks, which gives you further comfort that the reported financial numbers in your financial spreadsheets are correct.
7. A benchmarking tool, to compare your company’s performance against peer competitors or broader industry participants, assuming when such competitor or industry information is publicly accessible.
8. A scenario planning tool, to understand the macroeconomic impact of an asset purchase or divestment on your entire business.
9. A sensitivity analysis tool, which your company can use to understand what or how it needs to reach a certain financial outcome, i.e. EBIT (Earnings before Interest, Tax) from $7.5m to say $8.5m, from higher Revenue Growth and assuming all other variables remain constant.

   

10. Ad-hoc executive management reporting tool, where you can undertake more thorough analysis into specific areas of importance. For example, the financial performance of fixed assets or where your company is contributing or absorbing cash.